Ray William Johnson

Ray William Johnson (born August 14, 1981) is an American video blogger, producer, and actor best known for his YouTube series Equals Three, in which he provided commentary on viral videos.^[1][2] Many of the videos featured on Equals Three are noted to have received an additional boost of popularity.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} In February 2011, one industry publication noted that Johnson had six of the top 20 most watched videos of the month.^[8] In early September 2012, Johnson had accumulated nearly two billion video views.^[9] As of March 2015, his YouTube channel had more than 12 million subscribers, and more than two billion video views.^[10] On March 9, 2014 he announced that the last episode of Equals Three with himself as the host would air on March 12, 2014. The show later returned on July 16, 2014 hosted by Robby Motz.

Early life

Johnson was born and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.^[11][12][13] He graduated from Norman North High School in 1999.^[13] In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Johnson says he studied at Columbia University as a history major,^[13] while his profile adds he was preparing to study law.^[11]

Career

While at Columbia, Johnson started his formatted show, Equals Three, as a way to combine two popular video styles: watching viral videos and video bloggers.^[1] In Equals Three, Johnson reviewed, criticized, and added commentary to some of the internet's latest viral videos.^[2] Equals Three episodes are usually uploaded to his channel every Tuesday. Equals Three is on one of the most subscribed channels on YouTube, having more than 12 million subscribers in March 2015, and has been recognized by Guinness World Records.^[1][14][15] Episodes can consistently obtain several million views within a week. Johnson has obtained celebrity guests on Equals Three, including Robin Williams,^[16] Sarah Silverman,^[17] Gabriel Iglesias,^[18] Kal Penn,^[19] Margaret Cho,^[20] Bobby Lee,^[21] T.J. Miller,^[22] Garfunkel and Oates,^[23] John Cho,^[19] Jason Biggs,^[24] Kevin Smith,^[25] Andy Milonakis,^[26] Timothy De La Ghetto,^[27] RZA,^[28] and KassemG.^[29]

In October 2012, Johnson moved Equals Three away from Maker Studios, a multi channel YouTube network he had hired to help produce the show. He had announced his departure in an episode of Equals Three.^[30] Johnson has stated that he left Maker Studios due to the pressure the company put on him into signing a new contract. Johnson released images of the contract, which showed Maker Studios wanted a 40% share of his online channel's AdSense revenue, and 50% of the intellectual property rights of his show Equals Three. He stated that they were using "thuggish tactics" to pressure him into signing the contract, one of which was allegedly leveraging his AdSense account for the intellectual property rights to YourFavoriteMartian. Johnson also claimed that Maker Studios CEO, Danny Zappin, is a convicted felon, a charge which Zappin later publicly admitted to.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

Projects

FX

In May 2013, Johnson announced he signed a deal to produce a sitcom for the American television network FX.^[36][37] The show is a comedy based on the life of the YouTube star. The script is to be written by Mike Gagerman and Andrew Waller and executive produced by Dave Becky and Troy Zien.^[38]

"Riley Rewind" (2013)

On December 12, 2013, Johnson released a 5-part web series titled Riley Rewind, which he directed and starred in. It is the story of a high school student who has the ability to rewind time. After the suicide of another student at her school, she attempts to change time and save her life.^[39] It was initially launched on Facebook where it got an unprecedented 10 million views before hitting YouTube,^[40] and currently has 12 million views on YouTube itself.^[41] The series was listed as one of Variety's Top Ten Webseries of 2013. The publication praised his work saying, "The writing, acting, special effects and original music make this the best thing he's done to date."^[42] The series is available on Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.^[43][44]

Equals Three (2008–present)

Title card used from 2008 to 2012

In Equals Three (stylized as =3), Ray William Johnson reviews, criticizes, and adds commentary to some of the internet's latest viral videos.^[2] Equals Three episodes are usually uploaded to his channel every Tuesday. Equals Three is on one of the most subscribed channels on YouTube, having over 8 million subscribers in April 2013, and has been recognized by Guinness World Records.^[1][14][15] Because of his popularity, Equals Three episodes can consistently obtain several million views within a week. Johnson has been able to leverage his popularity to secure several celebrity guests on Equals Three, including Robin Williams,^[16] Gabriel Iglesias,^[18] Kal Penn,^[19] Margaret Cho,^[20] Bobby Lee,^[21] T.J. Miller,^[22] Garfunkel and Oates,^[23] John Cho,^[19] Jason Biggs,^[24] Kevin Smith,^[25] Andy Milonakis,^[26] Timothy De La Ghetto,^[27] RZA,^[28] and KassemG.^[29]

On December 30, 2013, Johnson announced that he would be retiring Equals Three in 2014.^[45][46] On March 12, however, in the last episode of the series hosted by him, Johnson announced that he would be taking one to two months to instead find a new host to replace himself and continue the show's legacy. He stated that this decision was due to the support of the show by fans. After several months of auditions, Ray announced Robby Motz as the new host and the shows continuation starting from July 16, 2014.

Your Favorite Martian (2011–12)

In January 2011, Johnson launched a collaborative YouTube channel called "YourFavoriteMartian" (YFM), which features animated music videos.^[47] The songs are performed by a virtual band of four fictional cartoon characters: PuffPuff Humbert (vocals, voiced by Johnson), DeeJay (turntables), Axel Chains (drums), and Benatar (vocals, guitar/keytar/bass/piano, voiced by Jesse Cale).^[48] Johnson writes lyrics, raps, sings, composes beats, and sometimes collaborates with other musicians to produce the songs. The channel was the top music channel on YouTube for a time and sold 1.2 million units on iTunes.^[40]

YFM has released 31 original songs, 2 remixes of original songs, 1 remix of another artist's song, 1 mashup, and 8 covers through the channel. As of March 2013, the channel has over 2.0 million subscribers, and over 482 million video views.^[49][50] In November 2012, Ray announced that the YFM project "has been retired".^[51]

References